Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/417

Rh have been seated ever since at Newington, Kent; and various members of the family have been honorably employed in the service of the kings of England and other powers. Thomas Catlin, the first ancestor in the United States, with two brothers, came from England or Wales some time before 1643, when he is mentioned as having been settled in Hartford, Conn. Putnam Catlin, the artist's father, served in the colonial forces for six years during the Revolutionary War. His mother, Polly Sutton, was the daughter of an early settler of Wyoming Valley, who was engaged in the battles with the Indians at the time of the massacres; and she was herself captured by the Indians at the surrender of Forty Fort.

Mrs. Catlin was a Methodist and a devout Christian; while the father, a practicing lawyer, was "a philosopher, professing no particular creed, but keeping and teaching the commandments." In 1797 the family removed to Ona-qua-qua Valley, Broome County, N. Y., traveling on horseback over an Indian trail, the baby George being carried in his mother's arms. They afterward removed, at different times, to Hop Bottom, Montrose, and Great Bend, Pa.

Until he was about fifteen years old the boy lived much with Nature, and became an accomplished hunter and fisherman occupations for which he had an inveterate propensity, and from which his father and mother had great difficulty in turning his attention to books. By virtue of his associations his mind and imagination were filled with stories of Indians and Indian life. His parents had vivid recollections of the terrible adventures in which they had participated; his father's generous hospitality caused the place to be frequented by Revolutionary soldiers, Indian fighters, hunters, trappers, and explorers, for whose stories he had an always ready ear; even the noonday rests in the farmfields were enlivened by the relation of incidents of the early settlement; and the very valley where he lived had been the rendezvous of Brant and his army during the frontier war.

His early training, which was that usual for the sons of persons of means in the colonies, was carefully attended to by his father and his mother. In 1817 and 1818 he attended the law school of Reeves & Gould, at Litchfield, Conn. He continued his law studies in Pennsylvania, and entered upon the practice of the profession in the courts of Luzerne and the adjoining counties. But during the time of his practice, from 1820 to 1823, the passion for painting, in which he had already in Connecticut become noted as an amateur, was getting the advantage of him, and soon all his love of pleading gave way to it; and, he says, "After having covered nearly every inch of the lawyer's table (and even encroached upon the judge's bench) with penknife, pen and ink, and